Life Returns

    The best Easter basket...

    Happy Easter!

Another del Cossa detail

 In How to Be Both, by Ali Smith, the teenage girl protagonist, George, goes every day to the National Gallery in London to see their one Francesco del Cossa painting, “St. Vincent Ferrer” (c. 1474).

Detail: Above the saint’s head, Christ sits in what the NG calls an almond-shaped mandorla, as if emerging from a heavenly vulva, arms extended, displaying his wounded hands.  “Look what they did! It hurt, but I’m okay now.”

The Angels on either side caress the mandorla’s edges as if showing off  a game-show prize. Don’t they look coquettish? “Isn’t this a nice refrigerator?”

That early-Renaissance pink! It’s like Christ is enrobed in Easter almond marzipan. 

This painting is not currently on display, as I’d thought it would be since it is prominent in this book (but it’s been published since 2014). 

https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/francesco-del-cossa-saint-vincent-ferrer

Today is Good Friday, which rather suits our historical moment. Bad leaders, a triumph of cowardice and cruelty, a denial of spirit…  

Keep your eyes on the prize! 

Minerva & Aries

 Reading the novel How to Be Both, (2014) by Ali Smith – – this is a detail from a painting she talks about:

“Allegory of March – Triumph of Minerva and Sign of Aries”, Frescos in Palazzo Schifanoia (detail) by Francesco del Cossa

 Roman Minerva is the Greek Athena. We’re in Aries now, for a few more days. Aries is ruled by the god Mars (that is, Aries).

I know del Cossa from his St. Lucy,  holding her eyes on a stalk like flowers

wikiart.org/en/francesco-del-cossa/saint-lucy-1474

Stories create room for …. “the same ability we had when we were eight years old to go ‘wait a minute…’”

—wonderful 15-min. interview with the so- smart and likable Ali Smith, on the importance for creative work of doing nothing/ being lazy; growing up with art and images as a Scottish Catholic (I didn’t know that was a thing!); and the value of metaphor for showing the physical is the spiritual, and vice versa —and both at once; etc.:

https://channel.louisiana.dk/video/ali-smithhow-stories-work

Resting

 Shhhhh… Some people are resting.

Cloud watching under a pine.

"This episode was badly written!"

Galaxy Quest is a movie full of genius--and affectionate and smart insights into storytelling.
(I always quote David Mamet saying this is a perfect movie).

This is one of my favorite scenes.
These two real-life actors (Sigourney Weaver & Tim Allen) find themselves inside the Star Trek–like TV show they starred in, but for real.

Here, they have to pass through some "crunchy choppy things" that MAKE NO SENSE.
"We shouldn't have to do this," says Weaver's character.
"This episode was badly written!"

I was texting with MsChocolate this morning about Holy Week, grief, unfairness, and acceptance...
The feelings are entirely authentic:
THIS MAKES NO SENSE...
And you scream and suffer... and then you accept (or not) that you have to do it anyway.

Kinda like Jesus on the cross:
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!?!
And then, Okay, then. So be it.
And in grief, the heavens are torn apart...

But it all looks better in morning...
"Oh, there you are! I thought you were gone forever!"

Here's another of my favorite creations:
Mary Magdalene sees Jesus in the garden, returned from the dead like a kindergartener's lima bean that has sprouted between wet paper towels.



Both comical and tender: she thinks he's the gardener. (That's why Squash the Squirrel holds a digging implement (like in Rembrandt's version of this story.)
She recognizes him only when he calls her by her name. 
"Mary."

So powerful, to be called by name.

Everything with humans does go on and on though, and we keep repeating this...
We have to go through the chomper field AGAIN?!?!

Anyway, talking about karma, I was saying, as I always do,
it's not like I literally believe these religious stories--(that's not even necessary)--but the truths they contain, the insights are often so helpful to me.

And I thought, Oh! Karma is like fan fiction.

If a fan doesn't like the way a particular story goes--say, something unbearably painful and UNFAIR happens (as it does in life)---
she can write "fix it" fiction, changing some crucial point.
"They didn't really die, it was their clone!"

(I'm thinking here of the unbearably bleak end of Blakes Seven. Noooo!)


(Or, in a humorous version, like in Life of Brian--spaceships swoop in and save Brian--temporarily.)

And karma is like a fandom fix-it story:
It feels unbearable that life is so random and cruel--
say, your child dies hideously;
your country is taken over by stupid, bad men--
and this suffering is the be all and end-all???

Clearly, this was badly written!
Let's come up with some fix-it...

I know!
Death isn't the end!
We get a do-over, but this time, we have the key code for the chomper sequence, from a previous experience (or from heavenly helpers--in the movie, that is true-hearted fans who know the show, inside-out).

And if that doesn't work, that's okay:
we, all of us, get another--endless--lives to get it right.

That is a very satisfying addition to this awful wonderful life, and I love it, and I like to employ it, even if I don't literally believe it.

And, who knows? If it's true, then great.
No punishment in this story, just feedback:
Try, try again.
Try harder.
Or not.

Whatever gets you through this episode!

4. My couch! My beautiful little couch!

It’s here! My coworkers just delivered my loveseat with the store truck. I love it!

 

It fits perfectly, and it's just what I wanted: sort of a 1970's old-person-watching-TV (almost ugly?) couch vibe. Which I don't know why that's desirable? Because it's the comfy side of the Space Age?

It’s something my working-class Italian relatives would’ve had – – the ones my father went away from, choosing instead my mother with her Victorian aesthetics. She did have great taste, but it was narrow. This couch would not have made the cut. I don’t discard her good taste, I add to it.

[From heaven she says, Now I like that style too.

Hm. Was that really her? It sounded like Penny Cooper...]

It is in like-new shape, though its label says it was made in 2008 (by the now-closed Southwood Reproductions in North Carolina).
But you could've watched Star Trek or the Watergate hearings from a couch like this.

(You can see, I haven't put the room back together again.)
I seem to have been collecting things that match it,
including the pinky Oriental carpet that clashes in harmony...

The blue ottoman went with the boxy, big blue armchair I put out on the curb this weekend. It was always too deep for me.

My altered matador w/ duckling on the wall goes great with it too--the weird brown-yellow of the suit of lights...

I think I've talked about this painting before?
It's one of my favorite things--I added stuff to a velvet painting donated to the thrift store.
(I could stop writing " donated to the thrift store"--it goes without saying that's the norm.)
A bleeding bull used to charge in the background, but I replaced him with mountains I cut out of a damaged velvet.

 

I had no intentions when I first made this, and no one needs to see it this way, but over the years it's  totally become "The Road to Emmaus" to me.

You know the story?
After Jesus is crucified, a couple guys [represented by one matador] are walking home from Jerusalem, where they'd been to celebrate Passover. (And here in 2025, it's Passover week right now).

A stranger comes up and starts talking to them. That's the duckling---can you see? It's soooo chatty!

Eventually they realize--it's that guy!  The "Immortal Essence pervading everywhere"--the one they said was the Messiah.
He really was!

They are amazed...
"... and he disappeared from their sight. 
They asked each other,
'Were not our hearts burning within us
while he talked with us on the road....?'"

--Luke 23: 13-35

My goodness, whatever I do, I keep returning to burning hearts and the like today.
But now I'm going to read on MY COUCH!!! Something secular.

3. Cucumberness Is

Third post today.
I have to laugh: What I'm struggling to say in my previous post is, of course, something people everywhere are always trying to express. Like, here, from Hinduism, there is an "Immortal Essence pervading everywhere".

What I haven't heard before is that our [karmic] bondage is "similar to cucumbers. . .

That is, "tied to their Creepers"

I was just cleaning out my emails and found this from Marz:

I'm listening today to a wonderful mantra to Shiva.
It involves cucumbers?

1: Om, We Worship the Tryambaka (the Three-Eyed One),

2: Who is Fragrant (as the Spiritual Essence), Increasing the Nourishment (of our Spiritual Core);

3: From these many Bondages (of Samsara) similar to Cucumbers (tied to their Creepers),

4: May I be Liberated from Death (Attachment to Perishable Things),
So that I am not separated from the perception of Immortality (Immortal Essence pervading everywhere).

_____________________

Or, as a T-shirt worn by Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky) says,
ISNESS
IS

_________________

Why am I on this roll with this today?

Maybe because Holy Week starts today, the lead-up to Easter.
All the strands come together for the Big Shebang of the Christian Year: love, betrayal, light and darkness, kindness, cruelty, death, rebirth....
I love that stuff.

And weirdly, it's the root story of the Russian novel The Master and Margarita, which I read last month.
A very curious book, written and set in Stalin's Moscow of the 1930's, the whole thing revolves around the story of Pontius Pilate's cowardice in and regret for allowing the execution of Jesus.

Pilate. Could have tried harder.

2. I know there is, an invitation.

Content NOTE: Written by a Pisces, very much in Pisces mode

I don't mean to condemn myself (or anyone else!), but I KNOW there is more I could be doing/undoing to clear the clutter of my heart and mind--or, borrowing from the Klamuth River project I just blogged about, to undam my soul.

I accept that it's meant to be comforting and encouraging, but I reject the common phrase, "Everyone is doing the best they can."

Are you?

I'm not! (I would feel sad if this was my best.)

This doesn't make me (or anyone else) evil or bad or sinful.
Absolutely not.
It doesn't mean failure.

Those are the wrong terms altogether. It's not about good or bad, it's more like true, or real... or "be-ing".
Maybe it's more like saying, I know there's something like light waves beyond what my human brain can see,
and I could explore that or . . .  swim or simply be in it more.

And it's more like an invitation to do that.

Ever since I was a kid I knew there was magic in the world; that spirit mattered; and that the surface way we live, as we must live to survive physically, was not bad, but was incomplete.
And the incidental off-put of that surface action is like clothes-dryer lint.

"Magic" maybe sounds too airy-fairy, purple gauzey, or just fake.
But magic is real and resilient. But to thrive in our surface world, it may need protecting and nurturing. The lint trap needs cleaning.

Or, in circus terms, it's hard to practice the work without a net.

Talking to the cashier and her girlfriend last night, I was telling them about the girlettes. They asked to see photos, so I showed a couple of the Toys Recreate Paintings ones.

"These are incredible! How do you get them out? Do you ever show in galleries, or...?"

No, I explained, whenever I take the girlettes too far from the realm of play––and play is free in all ways, or it isn't play––I don't like it. And they don't like it.

So, talking about doing "more" is also the wrong wording.
It's may be about being brave to go smaller, to try easier (not harder).
Like unfocusing your eyes to see the motes in the air.

Really, it's to step outside of measurement altogether.

I may never do more/less/other than I am now doing.
"And that's okay", as they say.
I am fine. I am good! I am.

But I do know there is an it--whatever "it" is--that is real.
For me, anyway.
And I am not always with it as much as I'd like to be.

No condemnation, just acknowledging my love for an unmet longing.
Or, my longing for an unmet love.

That's all.
Be on!

Life heals itself.

I'm waiting at home this morning for the thrift store to deliver my new love seat. I'm  drinking my morning coffee at my living room window, looking out at a dry and windy morning. Brown, brown, brown... but the very tips of some branches are in fresh bud, I saw as I walked to the lake yesterday.

I took the path through the bird sanctuary, and bird-watchers were out too, looking through high-powered binoculars for the bright flashes of little birds who migrate in spring.

That was the longest walk I've yet taken on my still-healing knee, and on top of clearing my apartment, moving stuff out onto the curb to give away, it was a bit much--my leg throbbed through the night. In fact, I'm thinking that after my couch is delivered, I'll take the day off and sit on the couch and rest my leg.

The learning in patience continues.

I. Ladies Who Carry On

I want to grow up to be like the Indomitable Old Ladies I know from the thrift store. Most of them are tough stock--grew up during the Great Depression on farms.

I saw the oldest of the original cadre-–Doris, who turns ninety-nine this summer--at the annual Appreciation Dinner yesterday evening. She is one of the few surviving founders of the store. Though she no longer volunteers, she is still going strong, getting her own plate from the buffet without help, still talking your ear off.
"I'm praying for you," she said.
"That's powerful," I said.

The next-oldest, Geraldine, rather shocked me by admitting she "isn't doing very well". These women rarely admit to a weakness unless it's deadly serious.

I got a ride with my work pal, Volunteer Abby, to the Italian-American restaurant across the river, where the dinner is always held.
I've always found the upper management to be stingy and unimaginative, and it's a low-rent affair:
a buffet of pasta without enough sauce and Caesar salad with too much, set up in the windowless, concrete party room.

This year, though the stores are earning more, our free drink tickets had been reduced from two to one. I bought  a second drink for Abby and me, and prices were not as low as the surroundings suggested-- a glass of wine and a can of beer cost $25.
But I felt better when I won a raffle prize for the first time:
$50 worth of coupons to a breakfast place that's been around for decades.

My constant disappointment in management aside, it's a good idea to gather the large and scattered group of workers, volunteers, and board members, and I was lucky in my table mates.
The new cashier had brought her girlfriend, both in their mid-twenties, and they were good conversationalists. We talked about the tattoos on their arms--mostly media references, including a peach from  a book I loved in fourth grade! James and the Giant Peach, by Roald Dahl.

The girlfriend works in IT for the insurance company whose CEO was murdered in December. "I used to run into him in the cafeteria. It was so weird, the sadness at work compared to the reactions on social media."

I said I hated that some people rejoiced in the assassination. 
I understand the anger and frustration--I share some of it! I felt a little surge of happiness when I read the news. But I won't go that way.
Returning to the Wild West, shooting each other down in cold blood, in public?
Such a symptom of social rot is not cause for celebration.

II. "The river is healing itself."

Is the rot so far gone that it can't be reversed?

No.
Life comes back.
This morning I read a BBC article about salmon returning to Oregon's Klamath River last fall, soon after four dams were removed following a campaign by tribal communities.

Fish biologists had thought it'd take years for the salmon to return, their numbers had been so decimated since 1912.
It took weeks.

bbc.com/future/article/20241122-salmon-return-to-californias-klamath-river-after-dam-removal

Image ^ from the podcast, Undammed: The Klamath River Story, buzzsprout.com/2375804

We don't have to keep descending into barbarity.
We can think different.
Not like Apple, but, for instance, like Lyla June, a Diné musician and cultural historian. Below, from her 2022 TED Talk...

"Much was made last year about the positive environmental effect of the [COVID] pandemic.

As more people stayed home, pollution levels dropped, animals began to reclaim habitat,
and the logical leap that many observers seemed to make was that the Earth would be better off without humans.

"I reject that leap.

(Laughter)

"The Earth may be better off without certain systems we have created, but we are not those systems. We don’t have to be, at least.

"What if I told you that the Earth needs us?

What if I told you that we belong here?

"What if I told you I've seen my people turn deserts into gardens?

What if these human hands and minds could be such a great gift to the Earth that they sparked new life wherever people and purpose met?"

In her TED Talk, "3000-year-old solutions to modern problems", Lyla June elaborates on four indigenous land-management techniques.

1) Align with the forces of nature:
"Why try to control the Earth when you can work with her?"

2) Intentionally expand habitat:

"Why put plants and animals into farms and cages when you can simply make a home for them and they come to you?"

  3) De-center humans:

"Why hoard for your own species when you can live to serve all life around you?"

4) Design for perpetuity:

"Why plan for just the next fiscal quarter when we could plan for generations not yet born?"

Even if the murdered health-care CEO represented the forces of domination that "plan for just the next fiscal quarter", we will not succeed in creating new and incorporating old good ways by damming our own souls like rivers, until the only way we can imagine change is to kill the messenger.

I am always interested in this very real question:
What is to be done?
How do I/how do we remove the dams in my/our hearts, minds, souls,
when we, even we who don't like it, are complicit (inevitably) in a profit-motivated, death-dealing culture?

How to protect and restore the rivers of my/our own lives?

Love seat coming...

I. Thrift

No surprise--most things sell better when visible. Mostly, only record collectors flip through the LPs, but once in a while I set one up for its cool cover.
My Boyfriend's Back sold soon after I put it on display:

Other things just don't move. I love vintage hammered aluminum, like the tray below, but it doesn't sell well.
That gorgeous green coffee pot is by Frankoma, out of Oklahoma, (I'd had some mugs by them, but they were so heavy, I gave them away.)

BELOW: Space age spun-aluminum is another matter---this set of kitchen canisters in the to-shelve cart will sell in a minute, I bet.

BELOW: Paddington Bear squints to look out through the small bullet hole in the window (above him, slightly to the right). "It's a fun game!"

The annual Society of St V de P conference will be in our town this year.
It'll be held at a conference center hotel by the suburban Mall of America.
Usually, attendees visit the local SVDP stores, but the organizers say they won't arrange trips to our store because "it's too dangerous".

It's not that it's not dangerous to live around there.
But even so, the whole MISSION of the society is to follow the model of Vincent de Paul, a real guy in 1600s Paris who followed the model of Jesus--that is, to be with the deprived and despised.

And to do it in LOVE, not in condescension!!!
Vincent said, " It is only for your love alone that the poor will forgive you the bread you give to them."

[Did he really say that? I guess not literally. But he'd agree.]

These Society members seem to prefer the far easier call of Being Nice . . . and serving the 'worried well'.

You'd think I'd be immune to moral cowardice and hypocrisy by my age, (being guilty of both myself sometimes!), but I was fuming with disgust over this.
I felt better after talking to Amina, Book Girl.
She just laughed merrily.
"Of course they don't want to come here!"

Of course.

 II. Clear the Clutter

I am in the mood for spring cleaning, and I need to––because I bought a love seat at work! I've wanted one for a long time, but never liked what got donated.

This new-to-me love seat is a modern-day reproduction of a 1970s piece of furniture. It's a puce green woven with golds.
It will go great with my pink velvet armchair!

To make room, I hauled the big blue armchair (always too deep for my short legs)--and a lot of other stuff --onto the boulevard outside my apartment with a big FREE sign.
I love doing that: stuff magically disappears.

It meant dumping stuff off bookshelves, etc.
Now my apartment must be restored to rights before the couch gets delivered tomorrow...

Pictures tomorrow...